English

What can I do?

Till now a great number of requests have been sent to us regarding the way in which something could be done to help liberating Rudolf Rocker out of his undesirable situation. We have built a Rudolf Rocker special page which gets permanently actualised.

What the Institute for Syndicalism Research can advise is to:

1. Publish the declaration of the Institute for Syndicalism Research and inform your friends and mates about the actual facts of the matter

2. Offer to translate our statement into other languages so that we can make the statement available in other languages on the Rudolf Rocker special-site.

3. Get in contact with newspapers, write articles and forward the statement to publications which may be interested in interviews with us.

4. We prepare an international resolution which will state that the texts of Rudolf Rocker must be free for publishing. Consider if you want to sign such a resolution.

5. Tell us your ideas!

These next points needs your own initiative:

1. Beware of the endless space of the Internet, there may be texts from Rudolf Rocker still free out there!

2. It is legal to quote from Rudolf Rocker´s texts in an adequate way. Do it!

3. Come up with many beautiful ideas. Certainly there are more possibilities than we came up with. Your independent initiative can do the right thing.

News: RUDOLF ROCKER SHALL DISAPPEAR:

Till 17. of June 2011

Besides other FAU-local-groups and other Institutes inland and in foreign countries, which published the declaration of the Institute for syndicalism research with own annotations:

USA: From the “Workers Solidarity Alliance” (WSA) reached us this declaration of solidarity: “The Workers Solidarity Alliance (WSA) is shocked to learn about the actions against the free use of Rudolph Rocker’s writings. This is insane and goes against everything Rudolph Rocker, the anarchist, stood for. Yours in solidarity, W.S.A.“

Scotland: Under the title “Rock(er) and Roll” “The Miserablist Speaks” documented the declaration of the Institute for syndicalism research with the following foreword: “It seems a German gentleman, Heiner M. Becker, is claiming to have the rights to the entire body of work of Rudolf Rocker and is threatening legal action against German language syndicalist website syndikalismus.tk and the Institut für Syndikalismusforschung (Institute for syndicalism research) forcing them to remove a vast collection of his writings.“

An other example of direct support came from the alltime actually and very informative French-German-language site Espace contre ciment, which translated our declaration very quickly into French and published it

The quickest declaration of Solidarity in the German language Area came from Radio Chiflado with the title “Rudolf Rocker soll leben!!!” (“Rudolf Rocker shall life“). There is to read: “In fact, we as anarchists aren’t glad, if the written ideas and actions of people get censored, bricked or even removed – that’s the same as if they would jail and kill the adequate person himself – what was done in history many times by dominant systems. We are especially in angry, if it attacks persons, who are in important parts integrated in the libertarian/anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist movement.”
The full text, you get

Ukraine: The “Revolutionary Federation of Anarcho-Syndicalists“(RKAS) has already put the translation of the declaration from the Institute of syndicalism research on their main site in the Internet and there is a discussion about in their newsgroup

Bulgaria: Declaration of Solidarity by the Bulgarian newspaper “Swobodna mysl” (the fee mind)

World: Forum and newsgroup from one of the most important international Sites of anarcho-syndicalism and anarchism. Libcom.org

Statement of the Institut für Syndikalismusforschung (Institute for syndicalism research)

The institute for syndicalism research keeps his main focus on the research and monitoring of the (anarcho)-syndicalist movement in the German speaking area. Through own unpaid intensive and hard work and the solidarity legwork from historians and researchers we have built up since 2007 a voluminous and steady growing database to the history of the German language speaking (anarcho)-syndicalist movement –www.syndikalismusforschung.info.

Thereby the Institute holds a worldwide fruitful correspondence with numerous historians, publishers and research institutions. However, there are not only supportive researchers. On the 1st June 2011 all texts of the most outstanding anarcho-syndicalist thinker Rudolf Rocker (1873-1958) got erased from our database.

A certain Heiner Becker demands the exclusive ownership rights to all literary works of Rudolf Rocker. Unfortunately, he didn’t get in contact with us by himself; instead of this, he has delegated it to the department of public prosecution Münster and to a lawyer office. We met the demands of the injunctive relief cause it is not in our wish to fill the pockets of a small-mind – to what we would have been forced otherwise.

However, we think Heiner Becker´s approach is dishonourable and not to accept. We have no understanding that the literary work of Rudolf Rocker got detain for the public through the tenure of a single person. We consider it a scandal that since 1999 this so called „holder of rights“ is not able to publish even one single book of Rudolf Rocker, not at all to speak about publishing the complete works and making them reachable for the public. However, he seems quite able to prevent others from doing it.

We hope that this approach which brings about the oblivion of Rudolf Rocker comes to the ear of all people familiar with this topic, as well as to research-institutions and also to the offsprings of Rocker and that they take the adequate measures.

We declare us explicitly in solidarity with all those who got affected by complains because of the publishing of Rocker-texts. Rudolf Rocker belongs to the progressive humankind and not to a private complainer.